It’s absolutely overwhelming when you accidentally bite into a piece of food and realise it’s way more spicy than you can handle.
Well, researchers in China have developed an ‘artificial tongue’ to combat this very problem. The ‘tongue’, which resembles a small transparent piece of soft gel, is kept on top of the actual tongue to taste-test meals before diving right in.
The device, which is still a prototype, takes inspiration from how milk’s casein protein reacts to capsaicin, the compound that makes chilli burn and tingle.
The device would be able to measure spiciness levels through an electrical current charge that occurs when casein binds to capsaicin.
“Our flexible artificial tongue holds tremendous potential in spicy sensation estimation for portable taste-monitoring devices, movable humanoid robots, or patients with sensory impairments like ageusia, for example,” Weijun Deng, the study’s lead author, said in a statement.
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